Compliance in teams – Implications of joint decisions and shared consequences

Tim Lohse and Sven Simon

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2021, vol. 94, issue C

Abstract: Are teams more prone toward non-compliance with laws and regulations than single individuals? We investigate into two key determinants of teams’ compliance behavior: Deciding jointly as a dyad, which allows deferring one’s own moral responsibility onto the team partner, from sharing the liability for gains and losses of collusive behavior. In our laboratory tax compliance experiment, teams are substantially less compliant than individuals are. Shared, as opposed to individual, liability leads to a large drop in compliance. In contrast, whether subjects make their decisions alone or together does hardly influence the overall compliance rate. When coordinating their compliance decision teams predominately discuss the risk of being caught in an audit but hardly moral concerns.

Keywords: Compliance; Team decision; Shared liability; Audit; Communication; Laboratory experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D91 H26 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804321000859
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Compliance in Teams - Implications of Joint Decisions and Shared Consequences (2019)
Working Paper: Compliance in Teams - Implications of Joint Decisions and Shared Consequences (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:94:y:2021:i:c:s2214804321000859

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2021.101745

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().